


What Kind of Man

by Ashentongue



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: An Insane Amount of Cuddling, Dubious Consent, Feral Behavior, Forced Pack Bonding, Hurt/Comfort, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Manipulation, Obsessive Behavior, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter’s Creepy PoV, Possessive Behavior, Power Imbalance, Stockholm Syndrome, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, references to past torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 06:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10691613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashentongue/pseuds/Ashentongue
Summary: Stiles’s human mind is broken, shattered into fragments. What shines through is pure instinct, revealing the vicious nature Peter always knew Stiles to possess.Peter wants to own him.—Peter fails to do the right thing when he is the one to discover a feral Stiles. (Peter, no. Peter, put that back. Peter no—oh my god.)





	What Kind of Man

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Polish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510179) by [Rrrowr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rrrowr/pseuds/Rrrowr). 



> Please go read [Polish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3510179) by the wonderfully talented Rrrowr as this fic was inspired by that piece in particular.
> 
> This contains a lot of things that would be a giant red flag in any real-life relationship. Please heed the warnings!

* * *

 

When Peter gets to Derek’s loft, they’re waiting for him. It doesn’t come as a surprise when he catches a whiff of their scents on his way up—Derek’s leather jacket obscuring his natural musk, Scott’s unattractive cologne he no doubt stopped smelling on himself a while back, and finally, Stiles’s interesting sweetness soured by a chemical sharpness from his medication.

The true alpha stands at the front and his nephew is right at the boy’s shoulder like the good lapdog that he has become after bleeding out his own alpha spark.

Peter marvels at the show of unity in their little intervention. If only they’d worked together this well in the face of other threats.

“What’s this?” he asks, but he already knows the answer. It’s all very predictable, he can see the guilt in Derek’s eyes and the tense set of Scott’s unfortunate jaw. Their body language is stiff and practically screams rejection.

“You’ve three days to pack up and leave,” Derek growls.

Ah, trust Derek to jump straight to business with no finesse. Peter gives his nephew a disappointed glance, hardly needing to fake it. It is genuinely disappointing to watch how hard Derek wants to please a group of teenagers.

“This is Hale land, Derek. And we might have some minor differences of opinion, but I’m still a Hale.”

Derek glances at Scott. “This is McCall land as well now.”

Peter wants to scream. Derek is handing everything over to a brat instead of fighting for the Hale claim. It isn’t a shared territory. It’s being usurped.

“Look,” Scott interrupts. “We know what you’ve done, and that’s not how we do things. And you’re all out of second chances. Three days, Peter.”

“What I’ve done? Pray tell, what have I done, other than support your idiotic band of teenagers with much-needed information—”

“The darach, Peter,” Derek interrupts and his fingers flex like he wants to let his claws come out.

That startles him a little, enough to draw a pause. He wonders who figured out what he’d been doing with the loose ends everybody with tiresome morals is prone to leaving.

No use pretending, it seems, so he allows himself an easy smile, all teeth and no warmth in his eyes. “Ah. That. Think we all know it was for the best, I just happened to be the only one who wanted to get their hands dirty.”

Peter ignores Derek’s pained looks—no doubt his foolish nephew sees this as another betrayal—and instead, his gaze goes past the two werewolves.

Stiles has been uncharacteristically silent the whole time. He stands to Scott’s left, far in the back and half in the shadows, fidgeting like he can’t stay still. The moment Peter lays eyes on him, he  _knows_. Knows who figured it out, knows who convinced Scott, knows who doesn’t fall for any of his carefully constructed half-truths.

“Nothing to say to me, Stiles?”

His words are met with a look of stubborn defiance that quickens Peter’s blood and makes him want to chase the boy like he’s prey.

“Oh, trust me,” Stiles speaks at last. “I wanted to say it with fire.”

Peter shivers and feels anger burn hot in his chest, but he also understands how Stiles thinks. He suspects the boy wouldn’t appreciate being told how alike their motivations are.

 _Keep the pack safe, no matter the cost._  People like Scott will never understand or be able to make the difficult decisions, as proven by the fact that they are chasing Peter out rather than dealing with him in a more permanent manner.

He silently swears they’ll come to regret their  _mercy_.

“Leave, Peter. If we find you in Beacon Hills after three days …” Scott trails off, keeping his tone firm. The boy has been working on his alpha presence, but he still comes off as an insecure child to Peter, unbearably naïve in his decisions.

“Very well,” he says simply, because he won’t beg to be allowed to stay. He can already feel his tentative pack bond with Derek fraying, and he will not pledge his loyalty to Scott.

Peter turns to leave and keeps his head high. If they expected him to slink off with his tail between his legs, they’ll be sorely disappointed.

“I’m telling you, he’s too evil to let go,” Stiles hisses to Scott and no doubt wants Peter to hear that as he departs. He can’t help the smirk that rises to his lips at the venom in the boy’s tone, contrasted by the true alpha’s weak excuses.

His only regret is that he didn’t bite Stiles when he had the chance. With the boy on his side, he would have ruled Beacon Hills. Now he has to leave him with Scott and Derek, and that is a tragic waste of potential.

 

* * *

 

Peter knows he’s strong for an omega. He’d been biding his time in Beacon Hills, slowly regaining his strength after he crawled out of the ground.

He doubts the others ever knew just how strong he’d gotten—not strong enough to take on a pack, but perhaps strong enough to challenge an alpha if the odds were first stacked in his favor.

Unfortunately his hard-gained strength is slowly bleeding out as months go by. His more primitive instincts are sharper, hungrier, more difficult to keep in check. He finds himself thinking about the early weeks out of his coma far too often—the drive for vengeance, the taste of human blood in his mouth, the memory of running in the woods and burying his claws in the soft ground.

Peter will never admit it out loud, but he doesn’t want to be that out of control again. Oh, he feels no remorse for what he did, but ultimately instinct-driven decisions led to his downfall, and now a foolish  _child_  holds the Hale territory.

He needs an alpha’s powers and he needs them soon, before he becomes too weak and ruled by feral instinct to set a proper trap for such powerful prey.

That’s what draws him from California to Nevada. He can’t say he cares for the new scenery, but he thinks he has a good lead on a weakening alpha, one that can’t seem to demand enough respect to keep his pack under his rule.

With chaos comes weakness, and Peter has always been good at exploiting weakness.

Yet, when he arrives where the pack territory was supposed to be, he finds no hide nor hair of other werewolves, only fading scents. He spends a few days circling around just to be sure.

Frustrated and puzzled, Peter stops at a tiny, insignificant speck of a town, tired and ready to move on. The dust from travel clings to the back of his throat and tastes far too much like ashes to his liking.

He’s standing in line at a 7 Eleven when he catches a whiff of something that makes his hackles rise.

Wolfsbane.

He turns his gaze to his bottles of water and beef jerky, huffing like he’s impatient to hide the scenting before he lets his gaze sweep the store to locate the source of the sickly sweet smell. He doesn’t let his gaze linger on the man wearing a dirty baseball cap picking out chips from a shelf near Peter, but he’s certain the scent is his.

Gums itching, Peter doesn’t so much as twitch while he breathes in and out. The urge to remove the threat is instinctive and he fights it because right now he doesn’t need the sort of attention that would come with leaving body parts all over the walls of a dirty convenience store.

“Um, sir?” A short girl with round glasses behind the counter looks nervous, and Peter realizes that nobody is standing in front of him and she has probably called for him once already.

“Ah, apologies,” he says smoothly, snapping right into what he knows is a charming smile as he steps forward to pay for his purchases. “Long day on the road, the mind tends to wander.”

“Know how that is,” she says and smiles automatically even though she likely doesn’t give a damn. Peter certainly doesn’t. His gaze might be on her, but he’s listening to the footsteps that stop behind him.

The hunter smells like wolfsbane, but he also smells like old sweat and alcohol. It takes all of Peter’s willpower to keep from turning around and opening the man’s throat with his claws, every instinct screaming that he has an enemy right at his back.

“Keep the change.”

He turns quickly after tossing her a few bills, and gains a brief moment to look the hunter over at close range.

Baseball Cap is yawning and rubbing at his five o’clock shade, not even twitching at Peter’s sudden motion. He looks twenty-five at most, likely younger than that even. Judging by his lax body language and inattentive eyes, it’s obvious that he’s no Chris Argent.

As Peter walks out of the store, he decides the man isn’t going to live long enough to become Chris Argent, either.

He has the man’s scent. He’ll find him again.

 

* * *

 

Outside a dinky local bar, Peter feels almost sorry for how easy the man is making this. Predictable; there was no challenge at all in tracking the hunter and then settling to wait in the shadows while he drank beer at what was possibly the only dive in town that offered cheap entertainment and low quality drinks.

A vague, nagging voice in Peter’s head points out that he really should just leave and avoid risking trouble, but he’s fixated on the prey now. Denying the kill would only worsen the growing conflict between instinct and higher thought.

He can give himself this. He can rid the world of another hunter and sate himself briefly by watching the man’s eyes as he bleeds out.

It’s approaching 2 a.m. when the man stumbles out, stinking of beer, sweat, and some woman’s bored disgust. Peter watches him sway and take his time lighting a cigarette. The golden flame from his lighter briefly outlines the hunter’s nose, crooked like it’s been broken one times too many.

Baseball Cap has a pickup truck—of course he does—and he begins to stagger towards it, obviously intending to drive himself to whatever awful motel he’s staying at while too drunk to even walk straight.

Peter rolls his eyes and grabs the man while he’s fumbling with his keys. Who knows, perhaps he’s saving someone else’s life tonight by not allowing the man to drive under the influence.

“What the  _fu_ —”

Peter presses his claws against the soft underside of the man’s jaw, his voice low and pleasant. “If you try to scream, I will kill you. If you reach for the gun I can smell on you, I will kill you. Do we have an understanding?”

Baseball Cap swallows and Peter can feel his Adam’s apple bob. No doubt the shock is sobering.

“Yeah, man. I feel you. Just … just take it easy.”

“Let’s walk,” Peter says and moves his arm around the man’s shoulders like they’re friends, clawed hand sliding down the man’s throat to rest at his collarbone.

Peter can smell and hear anything approach, and he steers them away from other people and into an alley. The scent of rotting food coming from the trash is strong, but not strong enough to cover the pungent stench of human urine.

His face is twisted into a silent snarl, fangs out and in the hunter’s face before he even realizes it himself. The man can’t help but fumble for his gun, but stops when Peter’s hand grabs his throat.

“Look—look, I ain’t got no part in anything, you hear? Not here to hunt, man!”

Peter’s head cocks. The man’s heart is tripping over itself, but it might be all panic rather than lies. He isn’t entirely sure he cares, but it might be worth the effort to know if other hunters are present.

“What are you here for,” he asks and goes for a pleasant tone, but judging from the man’s flinch, his control is slipping.

“There’s this—this event, I’m not going, believe me, I think it’s sick and fucked up—”

“Be specific,” Peter warns because his patience is running thin. The man’s breath is in his face, rancid and full of fumes from the alcohol and his foul digestion.

“A dog fight, man, a dog fight! I was invited, but then I heard what it’s all about. It ain’t my thing, I got no part in it, please don’t kill me—”

The man babbles on and Peter’s face twists in disgust at the begging and pleading. He turns his head and tunes the man out because he can hear noises, a group of humans headed their way, drunk and rambunctious. A bottle shatters against the pavement and Peter growls low in his throat.

He snaps his gaze back to Baseball Cap and knows his eyes are glowing because everything suddenly looks like it’s in muted colours but he can see almost perfectly in the dark.

The man freezes. “Please,” he whispers. “You gotta believe me.”

“Oh, I do,” Peter says and carelessly tears the man’s throat out with his claws.

The man presses a hand to his throat, sinking gracelessly to the ground, wide eyes staring at Peter. His free hand is grasping for something and Peter thinks he might go for his gun, but then he realizes the man’s fingers are brushing against the material of Peter’s expensive trousers, grip too weak to hold on.

Peter kicks the man’s arm away and watches until the hunter’s eyes go glassy and dead. The feeling of power is intoxicating and treacherous.

He pushes his fresh kill over behind the large dumpster and presses his back to the wall, waiting for the group of humans to pass. A part of him throbs with excitement,  _wants_  them to come into the alley so he can kill again and again, but he clenches a hand and presses his own claws into his palm until the urge abates.

He listens to the fading heartbeats before turning to go through the dead hunter’s pockets. He takes out the man’s wallet and any loose bills. A glance at his driver’s license reveals that he isn’t local.

Rowan Coleman from Wyoming won’t be making it home.

He’s about to lift the body into the dumpster, but a matchbook falls out of the man’s pocket and catches his attention. None of the matches have been used—the man did have his fancy silver lighter, after all—but there’s a hand-written time and place scribbled on the inside along with a single word. ‘Pooch’.

A moment with Google Maps on his phone reveals the address to be local, but it’s a warehouse district rather than anything residential or a place of entertainment.

 _Dog fight._ Peter’s features are back to human, but his lip curls in disgust like he might bare his fangs.

He heaves the body into the dumpster carelessly. His hands and clothes have blood on them, but he plans to burn the clothes on his way out, and the rest isn’t anything a little bleach won’t fix.

 

* * *

 

Look and leave, that’s what Peter tells himself when he goes to inspect the location marked on the matchbook. Yet he circles longer than he intended, long enough to catch the scent of something primal from a safe distance.

Fear-sweat, thick and so heavy that the slight breeze has no trouble dragging the scent to him where he’s perched on a shadowed fire escape.

Peter would recognize another werewolf’s terror anywhere. For a moment, he thinks he smells fire and burning flesh as well, and he has to turn his head away. Slowly drag in breath. And then focus on the scent again.

He thinks there is more than one wolf in there. Both male, the mingling musk strong and masculine. It reminds him of the boy’s locker room and briefly his mind goes back to Beacon Hills.

Something is making his hackles rise and he isn’t sure what it is. He feels like his pack is in danger, that he needs to do something, but there is no pack here.

He fears that being an omega is messing with his instincts, making him crave the company of the first actually-present werewolves he has caught scent of in months. He can’t allow that, especially not if he wants to kill an alpha.

While he’s debating internally, a small group goes to the door and talks to whoever is holding it open a sliver. After a moment, they’re allowed in, and briefly Peter hears the noise from inside better. Laughter, the murmurs of speech, beer bottles opening.

A keening whine, almost lost in the sea of noise.

Jaw clenching, Peter wonders if they have the missing alpha. It seems unlikely, but it is a possibility. He can’t tell by the scents; the fear-rage combination is too powerful.

It would be dangerous—insane even—to try and get in, but the growing, inexplicable  _need_  to do so is becoming difficult to ignore. Peter reasons that he must take risks at this point if he ever wants to catch an alpha, and one weakened by hunters would be a thrillingly easy kill.

He takes the matchbook out of his pocket, flicking it open and running the tip of his finger over the hasty chicken-scratch. It doesn’t take much deducing to recognize a poor password.

Perhaps he’ll agree with the next person to call him insane, because Peter finds himself strolling towards the warehouse, running a hand through his hair to ruin the careful combing.

He doesn’t exactly look like a local, but neither did the last group to go in.

A tall, dark woman opens the door enough to peer at him with a single eye after he raps his knuckles against the rusted metal. She doesn’t volunteer a greeting or any words, in fact, merely lets her gaze take Peter in before she cocks a brow.

“Pooch,” Peter says in a dry tone, avoiding looking anywhere but her face. He can smell gunpowder on her, but no wolfsbane.

“Yeah,” she says, looking bored then as she turns her gaze to a piece of paper. “And you are?”

“Coleman, Rowan,” Peter says without pause, drawling the dead man’s name out with confidence even as he prepares to run.

“Yep,” she confirms after a moment that likely only seemed to last particularly long. She tucks the scrap of paper into her back pocket. “That’ll be a hundred, sir.”

Peter smiles and smoothly digs out the bill, handing it to her. He has nothing but cash on him, taken from the emergency reserve he kept in case things went horribly wrong at Beacon Hills.

“Enjoy your evening,” she says as she opens the door wider for him.

Peter resists the urge to sneer. “I certainly will.”

Nothing about the unpleasant scents that assault him is enjoyable. The warehouse is a small one, long since fallen out of use, decay painting the metal walls and rafters with uneven brown spots. someone has dragged in a single construction light, but otherwise the place is dark.

People mill around the edge of a deep pit, a former pool perhaps. Peter doesn’t care to guess at its former purpose. He carefully blends in with the humans and catalogs them by their scents.

There might be close to sixty people present, and most of them don’t smell like hunters. Perhaps twenty carry visible weapons, and those are the ones that smell and look like hunters the most. A few carry the scent of herbs, ones often used by druids and witches of all sort, and Peter veers away from that small group. One of them is staring off blankly, her oval face scarred by claw marks.

It’s quite obvious that Peter’s odds aren’t good if he’s discovered, but he doesn’t feel nervous. People often ignore the obvious even when it’s right under their noses.

“Esteemed guests,” says a woman’s voice suddenly, amplified by a loudspeaker. Peter watches her from a distance, slowly circling behind the other attending ‘guests’.

She’s short and dressed in leather trousers with a tank top that cuts off right under her breasts. Her medium brown skin is scattered with freckles and her hair has been sheared into a harsh, symmetrical short look.

“Don’t we got a show for you tonight!”

Hopping onto a turned over wooden crate, she’s grinning wide enough to show her golden canines, sharp and glinting where the lights hits them.

“Check out tonight’s finest and let’s get them bets rolling, shall we?”

People are dragging in closer, and Peter finds that he’s gravitating towards the pit as well, something twisting low in his belly when he hears a whine. The hunters are holding sticks with metal loops at the end, and the loops are wrapped around two necks.

The male werewolves he scented, one at each end of the empty pool. He can’t see much of one, only the head and dirt-flecked shoulders. It looks more like a boy than a man, skinny and still waiting to hit that last growth spurt. He smells malnourished under the stink of fear-sweat.

The other werewolf is much bigger, a grown man with long, brown hair, a braided chin beard, and freshly healed electrical burn marks on his upper body. Neither of them is wearing anything but a torn pair of jeans.

“Miz Wendel sure likes ‘em big! Over here,” says Tank Top, putting on a show as she points at the larger wolf. “We got her favorite mutt, Sparky! Don’t let the name fool ya, he’s dumb as a brick.”

The audience laughs and Peter watches the man’s eyes flare cold blue. Not an alpha, then. He doubts the skinny one is, either, which means he should just leave.

He’s circling away to do that, but the girl is hollering into her loudspeaker again.

“From up north, the Dustins bring us a darn cute whelp, but this puppy’s bite is worse than his bark, ‘cause he ripped open the throats of his last two opponents!”

A low growl is coming from the pit and it takes two men to hold Skinny Kid when he tries to tear free from the metal loop that’s biting into his neck.

Peter stops dead in his tracks when he sees the kid’s profile. His face is contorted by the shift, fangs bared and cold blue eyes blank with a feral rage while his claws flex uselessly against the metal around his long, slender neck.

Even with the werewolf features, there’s no mistaking that snub nose or the moles placed exactly how Peter remembers them. Skinny Kid is  _Stiles._

The thrill that runs through him is electric. 

He has pictured what the boy might have looked like if he’d had his way back then, had time to seduce and sway Stiles to his side and give him the bite.

Reality exceeds expectations because the boy looks magnificent even in the state he’s in. The nervous twitching of prey has become the intense focus of a predator. Peter knows intent to kill when he sees it, and Stiles is practically rippling with poorly contained bloodlust.

He feels hot, burning jealousy for a moment, because someone got to bite Stiles. Someone turned him, someone who was not Peter. There might be an alpha out there who wants Stiles back, it might even be Scott.

The people around him are moving, and Peter snaps back to attention to realize that they’re placing bets. Stiles is about to go against a much bigger werewolf in what he can only assume will be a fight to the death.

And he can do absolutely nothing about it. Peter might  _want_  Stiles, but doing anything here would simply get them both killed. Stiles has to win his own match.

If he loses, Peter won’t allow the hunters a quick death.

“Twenty on the skinny mutt,” he says to the silent bald man keeping track of the counting, slipping him the note.

Peter hopes his optimism will pay off in more ways than one. He has already decided that he’s getting his hands on Stiles as long as there’s something still left for him to get his hands on once the event is over.

“Are you ready for this? I said,  _are you ready for this?_ ”

The crowd gives an appropriately riled up response, beer bottles rising and laughter ringing out among the cheers. Peter smiles, but his eyes remain cold and fixed on Stiles.

“Release the hounds!” cries Tank Top, probably thinking herself very clever.

While the hunters struggle to unhook their contraptions, Peter slowly walks along, evaluating the state of both Stiles and Beardy.

Stiles is all wound up with aggression and fear, nothing of the gangly, awkward brat from Beacon Hills present in his body language. His eyes are fixed on Beardy and the growl coming from him is a clear warning.

 _He’s feral_ , Peter thinks. The boy’s human mind is broken, shattered into fragments. What shines through is pure instinct, revealing the vicious nature Peter always knew Stiles to possess.

Peter wants to own him.

He focuses his gaze on motion. Beardy crouched like he’d been considering jumping out of the pit, but the hunters are brandishing high-powered cattle prods down at him. The man doesn’t look willing to fight, and Peter thinks it might be his first time in the pit.

It isn’t Stiles’s first time. The boy roars the instant Beardy faces him, and then he’s leaping at the much larger man to try and tackle him into the cold concrete floor.

Peter is, admittedly, a bit stunned. So is Beardy, because he goes down cursing.

The crowd is yelling as Stiles claws at the other werewolf madly, trying to get at his eyes or throat through Beardy’s raised arms. Over the growling, Peter hears Beardy try and yell sense into the boy—he doesn’t want to kill a kid.

Peter almost snorts. Stiles has the right idea. They have to fight, because the hunters will only let one of them out of the pit. And nobody’s life is worth more than your own.

Eventually Beardy seems to come to the same conclusion because his arms are turning into a bleeding mess, healing too slowly to keep up. He starts to fight back, and the werewolves become a rolling, snarling mess in the pit.

It’s exactly what the audience wants to see. Peter, in the meanwhile, wants to snap each and every one of their necks and pile the bodies in the pit.

Stiles is driven by desperation, but he’s a lot smaller than the other werewolf. Peter barely keeps from growling when the boy gets pinned. He wants to jump down and tear the other werewolf off Stiles.

Beardy is jerking his head down, all fangs and instinct, but he stops when a keening whine escapes Stiles. Peter stops to stare, because the boy is  _submitting_ , baring the long line of his throat to the larger werewolf.

Peter knows his eyes are glowing, and he has to take a few steps back to make sure nobody sees. Thankfully the crowd is fixated on the display.

“Look at that!” laughs Tank Top. “Puppy wants to play bitch!”

Beardy stops. Hesitates. He still doesn’t want to kill a kid, not even when people in the audience scream at him. Some boo, others laugh along with Tank Top and yell rude things about dogs fucking. Someone throws a bottle down, and Beardy glances up.

Stiles surges up in an instant and sinks his fangs into the other werewolf’s throat, ripping and tearing. There’s arterial blood everywhere, accompanied by a wet gurgle when Beardy tries to scream.

The crowd falls utterly silent at first and then roars back to life in wild cheers. Stiles is still biting down and doesn’t let go until the bigger werewolf stops twitching. He crawls out from under the body, eyes wild as his gaze turns to the humans.

That’s when he meets Peter’s gaze and stops, nostrils flaring.

Peter stares back at the boy and thinks he sees a spark of recognition in the feral blue eyes. He expects fury, but Stiles just stares before he’s cocking his head and letting out a strange, questioning keen.

The pack instinct Peter thought was malfunctioning throbs and burns, his skin feeling like it’s on fire all over again with the need to move, to greet the boy, but he’s all too aware of the enemies surrounding them and holds himself perfectly still.

It almost comes as a blessing when one of the hunters raises a gun and shoots a tranquilizer dart into the boy. Stiles staggers and growls, turning halfway towards the hunter before he’s falling into a heap on the floor, covered in blood.

“Aaaand the puppy takes it,” roars Tank Top, as if anybody could have missed what happened. “Congrats to the Dustins, your mutt’s a vicious killer!”

Peter can’t help but agree with that assessment.

People go to settle their debts and Peter takes the opportunity to slip away quietly. He knows what a werewolf Stiles smells like, now, and he could track that scent for miles. He just has to figure out how to slaughter the hunters and get the boy before they leave town.

 

* * *

 

Peter returns to lurking outside while the people inside celebrate with drinks, loud laughter, and obnoxious music. Some leave early, like the herb-scented trio Peter suspects to be either witches or druids gone wrong.

After that, nothing happens for a while, and Peter is left to struggle with the need to go back in and tear throats open until he can get his hands on Stiles. He distracts himself by wondering how long this arrangement has gone on, and how many people are in on it. There has been a distinct lack of law enforcement in the area despite the noise and light from a supposedly abandoned warehouse.

No matter. If anything, it only confirms what Peter has always thought. Humans fear and loathe their betters, and there is no getting along with them. His sister refused to see the truth, and, well.

They all know how that turned out.

The door opens and Peter straightens expectantly, but the figure being dragged out wrapped in plastic isn’t Stiles. He settles back in the shadows, watching the pair carry on with their body disposal process. No doubt it involves the wilderness and a shallow grave, perhaps several if the hunters happen to get more creative and have a chain saw at hand.

He clenches a hand and keeps waiting. This time, it doesn’t take long, the first pair barely gone when a second follows out of the warehouse, this time carrying the boy.

Stiles is limp, still stuck in the werewolf shift, but he’s alive. The boy’s bare feet drag the dirt as he gets carried between the large man that had been taking bets and a muscular woman in a sleeveless top.

Peter follows at a distance and watches the pair lift Stiles into the back of a dirty gray van. He slips out of sight behind a corner and presses his back to a cold stone wall, straining to pick up the voices of the hunters.

“—so you stay and keep watch,” says the woman’s voice.

A grunt is the only response and the woman laughs. “Don’t give me that look. Have a few from the cooler, but make sure you can still drive us out of here, okay?”

Peter hears footsteps and slips away silently, tracking her movements and circling behind another warehouse.

He waits for several long minutes. The lone hunter opens a beer bottle and the cap hits the ground with a metallic  _tink_. Peter emerges from behind a corner and sees the man’s back where he’s seated on a crumbled concrete barrier.

He won’t get a better chance.

The man has better instincts than Rowan Coleman from Wyoming because he turns his head when he hears Peter approaching, but it’s already too late.

Peter grabs the man’s head and  _twists_  with his remaining strength. It’s enough to break the bald man’s thick neck with a sickening  _crack._ Beer spills across worn asphalt in a wet stain and the cracks drink the liquid greedily.

He listens carefully, turning his head to the side, fingers curled at his sides but remaining clawless. He hears distant revelry, but no sounds of alarm.

Peter steps over the body to the van. The doors aren’t closed all the way, and he creaks them open slowly. The stench of wolfsbane hits him along with sweat and gun oil from the equipment piled in boxes, but there’s Stiles, tied up and drugged.

He grabs the unconscious boy and feels instantly soothed, the prickling feeling that’s been under his skin for months gone just like that.

Peter lifts Stiles, one arm under the boy’s legs and the other wrapped around the lean torso and arms. The boy’s head rests against his chest, hair oily and matted in places. Dried blood is still stuck to the skin around his mouth and to his chest.

A part of Peter is predicting trouble if he takes the boy, but a much larger, darker part of him is thrilled at what has fallen into his grasp, however damaged his unexpected prize may be.

Before he can enjoy what he has, however, he needs to get somewhere safe. He turns and takes off with the boy pressed close, summoning strength from his depleted reserves to maintain a pace most humans couldn’t match.

Peter lost his chance to turn Stiles, but now he has the boy, all killer instinct and lacking the human reservations that made him suspicious of Peter’s every move back in Beacon Hills.

No doubt Scott and Derek will flay him alive if they find him holding Stiles, but Peter can’t let go. There is much to gain from the situation, and a lot to lose if he has to struggle alone as an omega.

It’s the perfect storm.

Peter unceremoniously drops Stiles into the trunk of his car and slams it shut. He gets in the driver’s seat and pulls out from where he’d parked, a good distance from the warehouse.

He wastes no time in setting a course north, intending to cross the state line as soon as possible. Stiles gets to enjoy the beginning of this impromptu road trip in the trunk, because there is no way Peter will chance getting pulled over with a kidnapped, feral teenager in his backseat.

He doubts the boy will mind too much, considering he’s out cold. He doesn’t trust hunters, but he suspects they’re likely to use too much tranquilizer rather than too little.

Even before Peter started dropping bodies, he’d traded his Lexus in for a Ford Focus. A common enough car, more difficult for potential eyewitnesses to take notice of.

Driving it feels nothing like driving a Lexus, but Peter no longer feels bitter loss as he speeds out of the forsaken town whose name he can’t be bothered to recall.

He feels victorious, and for the first time in over a month, powerful.

Idaho’s national forests sound tempting, and a nice cabin holiday might do him good under the circumstances, so he sets his phone to navigate and settles in for a long drive.


End file.
